


Thyself a Memory

by Nimori



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-04
Updated: 2010-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 17:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimori/pseuds/Nimori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape must remember himself before he becomes a pawn in another kind of war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thyself a Memory

_Don't._

Blink.

Bright light. It imprinted on his senses for a moment, then dissipated like so much vapour.

_Vapour dissipates. Five drams of newt blood (for god's sake don't blink) and nine ounces of pickled hippogriff liver, stirred widdershins with a silver pipette._

Noise. More bright light. His eyes watered and his vision blurred. He didn't blink, though the light seared, stabbing into his brain and forging a sense of betrayal, his body an enemy before he fully knew he _had_ a body. He needed to blink, but mustn't mustn't mustn't and he didn't know why.

"Sir, his pupils aren't dilating." More noise.

No. Not noise. _Words_.

"Good, good. Give him a moment to readjust to sensory input, then call in the Minister."

_Don't blink. Mustn't blink._ The light dimmed and _(grow only in dim cool places; the fruit must be dried in complete darkness to preserve potency)_ still he did not blink. The blurriness subsided, and a face emerged from the haze.

Woman. Blonde. Narcissa. The first two were correct, he felt, but the last he could not be sure of.

_Don't speak. Don't move._

He obeyed the voice, not knowing what else to do.

The woman was absorbed in moving a feather across a scroll _(writing, the woman is writing, fool)_ and did not look at him. He didn't look at her either, and made his eyes be still, though they wanted to scour the room for something that would tell him... anything. His name.

But he mustn't look curious. Because... because...

Then they might know it hadn't worked.

A warm feeling filled him, tinged with just a hint of rancor. Pride? Yes, pride that he had worked it out on his own, and hadn't made any mistakes. He hadn't blinked, hadn't spoken. He'd fooled them, though he didn't know how or why.

The not-Narcissa left, and then returned with the man called Minister.

"It's done?"

"Yes, Minister. _Obliviate totalis_, performed at 9:17 this morning. He resisted much harder than any of the others, but the new programme will take effect over the next twenty-four hours."

Minister hummed and stepped much closer. Tawny red hair filled his vision. "Beat you at last, you son of a bitch," Minister said under his breath.

_My name is Severus Snape, and you haven't beaten a thing,_ he thought, and didn't know where the name or the bitter rush of triumph came from.

The door crashed open before he could wonder long. "Ah, Potter," Minister said. "More punctual than usual. Come in, come in." Another man. Turning to look would be an act of curiosity, so he held still and kept his _(eyes front, Weasley!)_ gaze on the wall. From his peripheral vision he saw only black hair and the glint of the overhead lights off spectacles.

It was a long word, spectacles. He was pleased to know it.

"I want it on the record that I am not sanctioning the programme," said the new one, Potter.

"We can't leave dangerous wizards unchecked," Minister said. "Come now, you must realize that. Take away his wand, lock him up, put him in chains, none of it matters to a determined wizard. Magic will find a way."

"I've heard your spiel before, Scrimgeour."

"Then you know we needed dementors at Azkaban, or half the prisoners would have escaped." Minister's voice softened, honeyed. "We needed them incapacitated by despair."

"Didn't stop Sirius," Potter said, and Minister frowned.

"We took steps after the dementors left--"

"Joined Voldemort."

_Don't flinch!_ He did anyway, but no one was looking at him.

"--but the prisoners started finding ways around. We almost lost Malfoy twice before one of the guards obliviated him. He was far more tractable after that, so why not make it standard practice?"

Potter glanced at him. At _Snape, my name is Severus_. "You've done more than that."

"A fair bit." Minister seemed pleased again. "And that's why you're here, Potter. It makes no sense for the Ministry to feed and house them. They're harmless, helpless, but still useful."

"If they're so harmless, why am I here?"

Minister clucked his tongue. "Society demands that criminals be punished, Potter. Even if they can't remember what they're being punished for." Minister looked over to where he stood, not watching, not blinking, but listening, oh yes. "Come now, will you take him or shall I send him to someone else?"

Potter's lips thinned to a harsh line. "Anyone else would skin him alive for something he can't even remember doing." Minister waited, that curious smile twisting his mouth. "All right. But don't think I'm going to stop lobbying against the project."

"I wouldn't expect anything less from Dumbledore's man." Minister left, still smiling, and Potter glared after him for a long time before turning back to him. To _Snape my name is Severus_.

"Snape." Potter tapped his shoulder, but he didn't answer, seized with a sudden fear that Potter knew the words that filled his head, the words that shouldn't be there, and would take them away. His heart thudded faster. "You will answer to Snape now."

_Obey without hesitation._

He didn't need the voice's reminder, for a compulsion to do just that rose up in him, locked obedience into place. "Yes." A pause for thought, the compulsion unsatisfied with such a bare answer, the voice advising humility. "Yes, _sir_."

Potter grunted, as though startled. Unpleasantly so. He'd upset Potter. A knot formed in his stomach and his skin felt too tight. "Follow me." Potter turned for the door, and Snape's feet hurried to follow without consulting him.

"Mr Potter?"

"What?" Potter rounded on the not-Narcissa.

"Did you want any more information before you take him? I could explain any potential odd behaviour in the subject--"

"His name is Snape."

"If you wish. He'll have trouble with motor skills and simple tasks until he builds a new 'vocabulary' of procedural memories. Those are memories based on actions--"

"Yes, fine. Anything else?"

She frowned. "The programme can prompt obsessive or compulsive behaviour. If you've dealt with house elves before you should be familiar with the signs. You can expect him to form a proto-personality in the first three weeks. Train him as you would a pet, and you shouldn't have any problems."

Potter's lip curled. "Thanks for the advice. Does he come with a leash?"

The not-Narcissa's expression cooled. "No need. He'll heel if you order him to."

"If you would be so kind as to follow me, Mr Snape," Potter said, voice clipped. He seemed to be talking more to the woman than to Snape, but Snape understood the order buried under the words. The compulsion wormed its way into his limbs and made them move. They left the small room with the bright lights that were all Snape knew.

Or perhaps all he was supposed to know. He'd fooled them, after all. Somehow.

A short grey corridor stretched away from the door, and they followed it to another room, this one with many doors. They spun, leaving him dizzy and distrustful of Potter for leading him here, but when they stopped Potter took a door without hesitation.

Another grey corridor, this one longer. Potter stopped him and stared at him, and drew a stick Snape was frightened of the instant he saw it.

_There will be no foolish wand-waving in this class._

"Finite incantatum."

Snape waited, silent, expecting great or terrible things to happen, but after a while Potter's shoulders slumped. "Didn't think so. All right. All right, let's get you home."

* * *

Home was an interminable journey away, full of strange faces and stranger magics, but to Snape's relief the disorientation eased and he was able to put names to more and more of what he saw.

Lift, fountain, robe, owl. Owls carried post. Post was letters, written with a quill. Quills were made from feathers which came from owls which carried the post which were letters written with quills--

He fell into many of these circular traps of thought, and was glad when Potter pulled him close and stepped into the fire.

"Godric's Hollow!"

'Round and 'round they went, and he didn't panic because he knew this on some deep level he suspected he shouldn't have, but it was dizzying all the same, and the jolt at the end sent him tumbling to all fours on the carpet. Potter kept his feet with ease, and brushed off the bit of ash that clung to him. Snape himself had ash everywhere; his hands left sooty prints on the cream-coloured rug, and even the long strands of hair hanging in his face looked dusty and grey.

Appalled, he wiped at the carpet, but that only ground the ash into the fibres.

"Stop that," Potter said, and Snape stopped. Acute misery attacked him, and he licked the ash from his fingers, not knowing how else to keep from dirtying Potter's house, but Potter exclaimed and waved his wand and the ash went away, except for the taste of it in his mouth. He kept licking at the joint of his thumb where it met his hand. It eased something sharp in his stomach until Potter pulled his hand away and made him stand up.

"Do you remember anything? Anything at all?" Potter asked.

_Don't tell him_, the voice that had lead him thus far advised, but at once the compulsion to obey swarmed over it, biting, stinging, and his mouth answered, "Yes."

"Well?" Potter said after a moment. "What do you remember?"

"My name is Severus Snape." Speaking the words, he felt a sense of loss. That had been his secret. "Grindylow's Beard grows in dim places and must be dried in the dark. Owls have feathers. Weasley should stop talking and keep his eyes front." He paused. "You're dangerous."

A wry smile twisted Potter's mouth, and he managed to look both pleased and cynical. "That I am, I suppose. Well, it's better than any of us expected. Wait here."

Potter left. Snape fidgeted in place for several minutes but when Potter did not return, he gave up on standing still and examined the room.

Despite the small amount of furniture the room displayed an eclectic taste, Snape thought, and he repeated 'eclectic' under his breath, liking the hard clicks on his tongue. A Provencal sofa, a Turkish ottoman, art deco table lamps, the walls hung with a strange mix of Romantic and post-modern and a signed Montrose Magpies Quidditch robe in a glass-fronted case.

Oddest of all, two words were etched on the mirror above the mantle: Know Thyself.

_Phemonoe had it inscribed over the entrance to Apollo's temple at Delphi._ And then, _Divination is a travesty of magic._

What sort of man had he fallen in with, who stooped to both foolish wand-waving and fortune-telling?

"I've spoken with Remus," Potter said, and Snape jumped. "He's going to do a bit of research and then he'll be over to look at you."

"Lupin," Snape said.

"Yes." Potter sounded pleased that he'd remembered, and a warm feeling spread through Snape's chest.

_You've pleased your master._

The thought doused his happiness, left him cold. He didn't understand how pleasing Potter could be a bad thing, but it was.

And yet, he wanted to do it again.

"You quote a Greek witch on your mirror," Snape said, and then felt rather stupid for stating the obvious. He didn't know how to talk to Potter.

"Dumbledore," Potter said, as though that explained everything -- and perhaps it should have, for an icy chill coursed down Snape's back. "He left me his pensive and a two-word note." Potter snorted. "Bastard."

He said the word fondly, so Snape didn't think he ought to agree.

* * *

Lupin came, and Snape didn't like him. He smelled odd, like dark storerooms, and he asked too many questions that made Snape's head clamour. When Snape resorted to chewing on his own arm to make the voices stop, Potter sent Lupin away with a promise he would consult with Kingsley and return next week.

Potter fed him and made him bathe, gave him clothes and then showed him to a room with a bed where he could sleep. Snape lay long after the house quieted, rigid and wanting to obey but not knowing how to force himself asleep. His mind seethed though he kept his body still, his eyes closed. He could not tell memory from random thought, so he chased them all, and the lone voice of guidance he'd begun with had been drowned out by dozens of others.

_Sleep, sleep, he told you to sleep-- Not a coward -- Owls carry post written with quills that -- Know thyself, my boy -- _

The rioting thoughts broke under one:

_Potter is kind to you._

He wasn't always, no. He'd hexed Snape.

_That was another Potter. This one is kind and has pretty eyes._

Yes, pretty. Snape chewed his lip and felt bold for thinking such a thing, but his head was quieter. Pretty eyes, yes, and he'd bet Potter's hair smelled... nice. He didn't notice sleep when it stole him away from his thoughts.

* * *

"I don't recall."

"Try."

"I am trying."

"Try harder."

_You haven't told me how,_ he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat and made him want to claw at his arm.

He might have said them anyway, but Potter didn't like Snape to hurt himself (because Potter was kind and had pretty eyes), so instead he tried harder. "I... there's a scent. That's all. I don't know what it is, Sir."

"Stop calling me that."

"Yes, Sir." Snape looked at his shoes. Potter had given them to him. They had funny white laces and squeaked when he walked. Potter had been so kind before the questions. So many questions he didn't know how to begin to answer.

Potter sighed. "One more time. What was your mother's name?"

"I... I don't know. There's only a scent. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. Take a break. Would you like a drink?"

Snape's breath caught, and he peeked at Potter through his stringy black hair. His mouth moved, corners turning up.

_Smile._

Potter was kind again.

_And pretty. He has a lovely mouth. And look, he's smiling back at you._

* * *

Lupin returned some days later, and he sat in Snape's chair in the kitchen, where Potter had asked Snape so many questions and then smiled at him. Snape lurked in the doorway, neither dismissed nor invited, while they talked about him.

That was his chair.

"Kingsley thinks Snape might have resisted with occlumency," Lupin said, while sitting in Snape's chair. Sitting in Snape's chair and touching things.

_Don't move the salt shaker!_

Snape glared at Lupin, unnoticed, and raised his wrist to his mouth. He tore out a hair on his arm with his teeth, then another.

"Wouldn't they have expected that?" Potter asked, doing absolutely nothing as Lupin twisted the salt shaker in place.

"It's such an obscure art... Most people have never heard of it let alone know all its applications."

"What can we do to help his recovery?"

Lupin shrugged, and bumped the napkin holder. Snape caught his breath. "I suspect Snape's already done the only thing available, and protected the core of himself."

"He doesn't act much like himself," Potter said, and for a moment Snape forgot the salt shaker and the Lupin in his chair. Potter sounded... warm.

"Perhaps this _is_ Severus, without all his baggage. Stripped bare and made innocent." Lupin hesitated. "I never expected you to expend this much effort on his behalf, Harry."

_Harry._

Potter snorted. "Nor did I." Lupin waited with an expectant tilt to his head until Potter continued. "A few facts came to light..."

"The pensieve?" Lupin asked. "I know Dumbledore left you one."

"It was empty," Potter said sourly. "Dumbledore was never one for up-front explanations. Seemed to think I learned more by figuring things out myself." Lupin raised a brow, and Potter hid a smile with his tea cup. "No, Hagrid overheard a conversation between Snape and the headmaster. Nothing that changes what happened, what he did, but I understand his reasons now. I'd've asked the Wizengamot to commute his sentence if they'd given him a trial." Potter hunched over his tea, blew on it, though it must have been long cold. "He didn't deserve a life sentence, and he certainly didn't deserve this. No one does."

_You are not past tense._

Another voice disagreed.

_His name is Harry,_ said yet another, foolishly, and he chose to listen to that one.

"You weren't much for social crusades in school." Lupin kept at it, dog worrying a bone. Or a wolf. "Foiling evil schemes and battling monsters, yes, but Hermione was the conscience of your little group."

Harry _(Potter, his name is Harry)_ clenched his jaw, then chased away the tension with a sigh. "Dumbledore left me a note with the pensieve. 'Know thyself.'"

"Phemonoe," Lupin said, nodding.

"So I discovered." Harry stared into his tea, a small frown creasing the strange scar on his forehead. "Did you know Dumbledore used his pensieve to gain new perspective on events? Know thyself... I've thought a lot about it. About the man I am, and more importantly the man I want to be." Harry glanced up, caught sight of Snape in the doorway. "I'm not going to turn away when I see something wrong."

It seemed like a foolish way to live to Snape, but he supposed he benefited from Harry's sense of justice.

Later, after Lupin left, Snape spent two hours trying to get the salt shaker back into position.

* * *

Snape knew he was meant to do more at Harry's house than try to remember the things Harry wanted him to. A little voice, the one he'd come to loathe above all the others, told him so. It drove him to clean the kitchen early one morning until Harry came downstairs in his pyjamas, candle in one hand, wand in the other, and caught him gouging out the grout between the floor tiles with a butter knife.

"It's dirty," Snape insisted.

"It's not," Harry replied, and Snape spent the rest of the day hiding from the twin voices dueling over whether Harry was correct (as everything Harry said was) or the floor was dirty (clearly filthy, and shame on Snape for allowing it to become so).

He cooked, once, and became distracted by a might-be memory and nearly burned the house down.

"It was only a pan fire," Harry said after. "You got the lid on right away. Look, there isn't even any soot on the wall."

Nevertheless he slipped into the parlour at the first chance and sat behind the sofa where he could see the mirror over the mantle. _Know thyself. Severus, please._ He bit his fingers bloody before Harry found him.

"How am I to keep you from harming yourself?" Harry asked as he rubbed a warm, spice-scented balm on the bites.

"You have soft hands," Snape said. He didn't know how to talk to Harry, but he wanted to try. "I like them."

Harry seemed puzzled but accepted the compliment. "Thank you, I suppose." He didn't speak for a moment, and Snape agonized over mentioning his eyes or the way his hair smelled. "Your hands are very, er, elegant."

Snape flushed, a part of him pleased in a smug sort of way, the rest of him just confused. His hands didn't look elegant to him; they looked like someone had been biting them.

* * *

"The programme has stabilized," Harry said into the fireplace, to a dark-skinned, heavy-lidded man Snape didn't know. "At least he hasn't had any new behaviour in a few weeks."

"Has the biting stopped?"

"When he remembers I don't want him to do it. I caught him chewing on his sleeve yesterday, but I think that's the same compulsion." Harry frowned, and looked down at his knees where they rested on the hearth. "Thing is, he stopped making progress with his memory at the same time. He remembers a few names, a few faces, a bit of magic. I don't know what else to do."

Snape drew back further into the kitchen. He'd thought they were making progress. He'd reached for Harry's hand during the last session, and Harry had taken it, told him he was doing well.

_Potter's a liar._

_If Harry says something, it's true._

The faded scars on the back of Harry's right hand settled the argument, Snape decided. Anyone with 'I must not tell lies' written on the back of his hand must be trustworthy.

* * *

He knew Harry caught him staring most days, and he knew that it puzzled Harry, but he couldn't stop himself and Harry wouldn't make him. He felt itchy, like there were too many people inside his skin. He could bite and bite and he would never chew them all away.

_Pretty eyes and nice-smelling hair and soft hands._

He sat next to Harry on the sofa, and Harry glanced up briefly and smiled before returning to his book. Snape knew he should go and get a book to read too, that Harry liked to see him reading things that might help him remember -- potions books, biographies.

Instead he touched Harry's arm.

Harry looked up again, but Snape want didn't anything in particular. Nothing but to touch.

"You're difficult to read around."

"I'm sorry." Snape didn't take his hand away though. Being near Harry helped for a time, but soon he was itchy again. Harry had gone to his book and Snape went back to thinking about Harry. About his eyes and hair and hands and what it might be like to put Harry's fingers in his mouth and lick them.

_You would never bite your hands again._

Wouldn't he? He licked his lips, and slid off the sofa to kneel before Harry. Before Harry could protest, he'd stolen a hand and licked.

"What-- Snape! Stop that." Harry wiped his hand on his robe, but the rejection only made him realize his error, and he pushed his face between Harry's legs, riding Harry's startled yelp, inhaling deeply.

This, this, this was the lack, the itch, the need that made him bite his own flesh. He mouthed the growing hardness -- gently; he'd never bite now that he knew what he needed. Excitement thrummed down his spine, more than half of it the thrill of discovery. Of triumph.

"Oh god," Harry breathed, and pulled him away, pulled him to his feet. They stared at each other.

_This is how it was always meant to go. Don't fight._

_Don't blink._

Harry's face softened. When Snape pressed close Harry kissed him, a gentle heat, short-lived and precious for it.

"Snape. Severus. You don't know what you're asking for."

_Tell him you do._

"I do."

"You don't, and it's not appropriate. I would be taking advantage of you." Hesitantly, Harry stroked the side of his face. "You understand?"

"Yes."

Somewhere in his head, something clicked. _Sub-directive twelve complete._ For once his head fell quiet, and there was only him and the harsh rasp of his breath in his throat. He fled the parlour, fled Harry, fled the mirror and the last bit of help Dumbledore could give either of them, the last thing he'd asked them to do.

_Know your own mind._ Not that it had done Snape any good.

He understood -- too late -- but he didn't think Harry did.

* * *

"Are you happy?"

Snape stopped in the doorway. He wanted to sit down in his chair and eat his breakfast like he did every morning, but the lights in the kitchen were off and there was no breakfast waiting and Harry was staring at him like... like...

"No," he said. "I'm not." He had been, before he'd touched Harry.

"What I can't figure out," Harry said coldly, "is how you contacted them. The floo is locked and Hedwig wouldn't answer to you."

Snape looked at the paper on the table. There was a photo of Harry kissing him on the front page. Another of him on his knees, trying to stop his itch. "She's a bug sometimes. The woman."

_Tell him you didn't call her!_

_You knew, though. You knew she would come, knew she was there._

He had known, because the voices knew, even if they hadn't told him until it was too late. He'd been so proud that he'd fooled them, but Minister had won anyway. _Sub-directive twelve complete._

"Rita." Harry still had not moved. "I'd thought she knew better."

_Minister is more frightening than you._ He didn't say so though. Harry disliked it when people feared him, and didn't want to admit he needed that defense. It was a good one, Snape thought, until you forgot yourself and what remained could not frighten a puffskein.

"I... I do like your eyes," Snape said, and then realized he would never know if that was true.

"Can I ask what you thought to gain?"

Quietly: _Sub-directive one engaged. Do not answer questions pertaining to the programme._

Snape pressed his lips tightly together. He wanted to correct Harry's grammar. He wanted to gnaw at his fingers. He wanted Harry to kiss him again. He wanted to answer, but he couldn't. He didn't know why he did anything anymore. Too many voices, and most of them weren't his.

"I was helping you," Harry whispered.

_He can't help you._

_You don't deserve to be saved._

Neither of them protested when the aurors came to escort Snape back to Azkaban.

_Beat you at last, Potter,_ said the voice that sounded like Minister. _Well done, Mister Snape._

* * *

They reassigned him to the Ministry. First cleaning the floors, then later, after they tired of him doing it wrong, filing paperwork in Werewolf Support Services. No one much cared if he lost a claim there except, perhaps, the werewolves themselves.

He saw Potter on occasion, sweeping through the Ministry like a green-eyed, scandal-fueled hurricane. If Potter had been a nuisance before, he was an outright enemy now, and open warfare raged for months.

Potter won in the end, of course. No one pretended Scrimgeour wasn't sacked to make way for a minister more to Potter's liking, and by the end of the month Snape found himself living in a large old house with a dozen other obliviated criminals, four nurses, and a healer. He didn't have to clean any floors, but he did have to wash the dishes Sundays and Tuesdays and make his bed every morning. He liked his housemates, though they were poor conversationalists, and got on well with the nurses.

He and the healer took a mutual dislike to each other, which was a shame since he had to see her three times a week. She thought he wasn't trying. Perhaps one day she would break sub-directive one, and he would be able to tell her about the others.

Depth charges lurking in his head, relics of Scrimgeour's war with Harry Potter. Someone must know how to disarm them.

He read the papers, and cheered quietly to himself when Potter got one of the laws about werewolves adjusted. A small thing, but something Potter would do. Dumbledore would be proud, but that didn't matter because _Potter_ was proud, and that was all Dumbledore had ever asked of him.

He saw Lupin's name once, and few others he recognized. They found a Draco Malfoy, eight years dead. He didn't know how to feel about that, and shortly thereafter he had to stop reading the papers when something he read triggered sub-directive nineteen.

They stopped the bleeding and strengthened the imperturbable charms on the windows, but Snape was frightened and he stayed in his room for a long time after that. He hadn't known where he'd been going or what the voices would tell him to do when he got there. He was viciously glad Scrimgeour lost.

Once a week he wrote a letter to Potter, and then burned it in the fireplace. Perhaps one day, when he knew himself, trusted himself, knew which of the voices in his head were planted there to hurt Potter, he would send it.

For now he would curl around the feeling at night, certain he shouldn't cherish it so, that he -- the real _Snape my name is Severus_ \-- would loathe the emotion.

For being false.

For being Potter.

For being love.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Maeg, Gina, Amanuensis and Cordelia. Written for the Snarry Olympics, Team Angst. Prompt: Posthumous Request.


End file.
